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September 21, 2010
Don't fret, fellow Americans. The Great Recession is over. Has been since last summer.
Oh, you don't buy it? Even after economists from the National Bureau of Economic Research declared Monday that the recession ended in June 2009? The experts have determined that the recession of our lifetime - the longest since World War II - ended more than a year ago.
Why, then, are you so glum?
Because the economy - recession or not - remains a creaky ship on a turbulent ocean, its stability neither predetermined nor preordained.
Put simply, the recession may be "over," but its effects still affect virtually every street, every business and every household in this nation. To think otherwise is an exercise in extreme optimism that clouds the depths of the economy's woes.
As President Obama said Monday about the 4 million Americans who remain unemployed, "(The recession) is still very real for them."
Granted, Alabama's role in this discussion brightens - slightly - the picture of doom and despair. Let's not ignore uplifting news when it arrives.
Last week, the state's unemployment rate fell for the fourth straight month; it's now 9.2 percent. What's more, that rate is below the U.S. rate for the first time in almost two years. (Of course, tell that to counties such as Wilcox, Greene and Dallas, which all have unemployment rates of 17 percent or higher.)
Not impressed? In April, Alabama's rate was a depressing 11 percent.
Count Gov. Bob Riley as one of the most vocal cheerleaders for the state's unemployment improvement this summer. "To see such a significant drop in just four months is incredible," he told the Associated Press.
Of course, Riley would be wise to focus on the flip side of Alabama's unemployment story: Nearly 200,000 Alabamians - enough to fill the University of Alabama's Bryant-Denny Stadium twice - remain out of work because of this recession's lingering effects.
That is the core of Monday's economist declaration: not that the recession is over, but that so many Americans - regardless of age, training or education - remain out of work more than a year after the downturn ended.
That fact alone underscores the undeniable fact that job creation is job No. 1 for the White House and state governments.
In Alabama, we see the whole spectrum: the splendor of job growth in Madison County on one end, the vast swaths of high unemployment in the Black Belt and other rural counties, including a few here in northeast Alabama. Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that Republican gubernatorial candidate Robert Bentley has made his pledge to refuse a salary until unemployment drastically improves a central part of his campaign.
Smart politicians at the federal and state level will give Monday's obituary for the Great Recession scant thought. It's meaningless. There's no reason to tout victory over economic turmoil until it's defeated. Based on the number of Americans without jobs, or whose pay has been slashed, or whose benefits have been cut, victory remains a far-off dream.
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